Look to Sweden! Obama's High-Tax Gurus

Sun, 05/13/2012 - 16:21 EDT - Forbes.com - Top Stories

Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez ( Journal High Tax Rates Won?t Slow Growth) offer a beguiling Leftist narrative: The 1% will cough up incremental tax revenue up to a 70 percent rate without cutting the things they do to generate economic growth. We can then use their money to fund "higher-return public investments" (such as ...

It’s a sign of how well relentless propagandizing works that Joe Stiglitz has to devote a lengthy op-ed in the New York Times to debunking the idea that our income tax system, whose salient characteristic is low tax burdens for the rich, is good for anyone other than the rich.

Over the last year, I've frequently lamented the United States' increasingly absurd position on corporate taxes - maintaining one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world and routinely demonizing standard international business tax practices, while other countries (like Canada) are racing to eliminate tax burdens in order to enhance their domestic companies' global competitiveness. Unfortunately, the last few weeks have produced a depressing cavalcade of similar news.